HOUSTON — Driving south from downtown on Interstate 45, there’s a nice billboard for a dinosaur exhibit:

“Best ribs in town

Houston Museum of Natural Science”

That would have been true two years ago on the Texas BBQ Posse’s first tour of the Bayou City. The only good barbecue we found then was in Galveston, 50 miles away.

This time was different.

The Posse — a casual group of barbecue lovers that includes several Dallas Morning News staffers, family and friends — covered 610 miles over 35 hours for the latest chapter of our BBQ Chronicles.

Five of the six joints we hit served good smoked meat. One, Killen’s Texas Barbecue in Pearland, was outstanding.

“We can go home now,” said Posse member Phil Lamb, as we sampled from a platter filled with brisket, pork ribs, pork belly, beef ribs, turkey and sausage. Every item was moist, flavorful, nicely cooked.

“When you factor everything in, this is the best barbecue place in Texas,” Posse co-founder Chris Wilkins declared.

Some of the six Posse members on the tour agreed with Wilkins. Some urged more caution before making such a declaration.

If not No. 1, we all agreed, Killen’s belongs in the same company as joints like Franklin Barbecue and la Barbecue in Austin, Snow’s BBQ in Lexington and Pecan Lodge in Dallas. These are places that we’d drive across the state to visit and recommend the same to good friends.

Killen’s is run by Ronnie Killen, who also operates the well-regarded Killen’s Steakhouse in Pearland. Beginning last year, Killen sold barbecue out of a trailer for several months before opening his permanent location early this year.

Permanent is important. Wilkins pointed out that on this warm, humid, rainy Gulf Coast Saturday morning, we were sitting comfortably inside an air-conditioned restaurant. Trailer joints, charming as they can be, lose some attraction when it’s very hot or very cold or raining.

We got the downside of the trailer experience the previous day at the first stop on our tour, CorkScrew BBQ in Spring.

(CorkScrew will be closed for most of August for expansion and vacation, reopening Aug. 26.)

Our next stop was Virgie’s Bar-B-Que in Houston, a holdover from our first Houston tour. We didn’t like it then, and it was the only disappointment this time.

“I thought we might have been wrong the last time, but we weren’t,” Wilkins said.

Brooks’ Place, the last barbecue stop of the first day, is located in an Ace Hardware parking lot in Cypress.

In early 2013, Trent Brooks said, he was struggling to sell three or four briskets a day.

“Then one Wednesday,” he recalled, “I opened and all of a sudden my Twitter account exploded. In an hour, I was done.” Sold out.

The next day, he said, there were about 50 people in line when he opened.

What happened? Brooks’ Place made Texas Monthly’s list of the Top 50 barbecue joints in the state. Instant celebrity and business boost.

“For a month, I sold out in two hours a day,” Brooks said. It takes a little longer now. Still, Brooks said, he’s normally out of smoked meat by 2 or 3 p.m. on weekends and 4:30 to 5 p.m. on weekdays. He sells about 50 to 60 briskets a week.

We ate brisket, pork ribs and a very spicy deer sausage and liked them all. “There’s a lot more going on here flavor-wise,” Jim Rossman said, comparing the place to CorkScrew.

Brooks started his joint part-time in 2009 and went full-time in 2011 after the company he worked for let him go.

“After I lost my job, I didn’t look back,” he said.

As the Posse has gained touring experience — this is our fifth year — we try to pace ourselves more. Friday night in Houston, we attended an Astros game at Minute Maid Park, a short walk from our downtown hotel.

Saturday morning, we were back on the barbecue trail, beginning at Killen’s, and then on to our final stops, Ray’s Real Pit BBQ Shack in Houston and the Brisket House.

Because of a communications snafu, the main body of the Posse ate at the Brisket House location in Deer Park, while one member hit the Houston location.

At all three places, the pork ribs reminded Posse members of those at the Baby Back Shak in Dallas. Shak ribs are among our favorites. Ray’s also serves a tasty boudin, just like the Shak.

“If this place was in Dallas, I’d eat lunch here all the time,” Wilkins said of the Brisket House.

It rained during the first part of our four-hour drive back to Dallas. Our route took us over the Sam Houston Tollway Ship Channel Bridge, about 170 feet above the water.

By the time we got to I-45, the sky was clearing. But in the car, the debate about Killen’s continued. Just like sports, everybody has a barbecue opinion.

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